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anyway, I think it's important to just try and feel the game, that's the thing you'll remember much later, not all the hours you've put into it, but the feel, and you can absorb that as long as the game holds you... a couple of minutes or a couple of months :)

keeveek: You don't have to finish games. The purpose of entertainment is... to make you entertained. If you don't have enough patience to finish the game, don't do it. Just play the other one.

yeah, I agree that games aren't the best tool to train your will, but what is? ;)

I'm also one of those people who likes playing games, but not necessarily finishing them. I see this as a non-issue, since I don't feel a game should be beaten just because you started it. If I feel like finishing it, fine, then I probably will, but I wouldn't make myself play it after I loose interest, because I think that time could be better spent on something that actually interests me. Thankfully, I have a rather large archive of saved games, so I can return to a specific game and finish it even years later without having to go from the start. But I usually do anyway, heh.

Titanium: I'm also one of those people who likes playing games, but not necessarily finishing them. I see this as a non-issue, since I don't feel a game should be beaten just because you started it. If I feel like finishing it, fine, then I probably will, but I wouldn't make myself play it after I loose interest, because I think that time could be better spent on something that actually interests me. Thankfully, I have a rather large archive of saved games, so I can return to a specific game and finish it even years later without having to go from the start. But I usually do anyway, heh.

for me it's these periods of time when I dig some game so I play it until something else comes :) for the last month for examply I've played The Secret World almost every day, super loved it. but I stopped for whatever reason (probably left home for a weekend) and during this "time off" I remembered a different game, and got an urge to play that... so yeah, today I started The Witcher 2 again, and my last save was from August 2011 :D (had to run the tutorial again to remember how to control the game ;)

Fictionvision: The rise of frequent game sales has made many people more collectors than anything else for modern PC gaming. I am very much guilty of it myself.

You could always try what I am attempting this year. Have a set budget for the entire year and force yourself to stick to it so you will go back and finish the games had fun with but never made it all the way through. Of course I cheated before I even began by buying a bunch of stuff at Christmas, but since the start of the year I've been making progress through my backlog.

tinyE: Me too! I only picked up 9 games yesterday! :P

I'm doing better than you. I only bought 4! The other one in the bundle I had already. Then I traded for one so my backlog only increased by 5!

If it's something I love, I end up replaying it multiple times long before I get to the end. The only games I can easily recall finishing were COD Black Ops, and Act of War: Direct Action. Why? Because they were too damn short!

For me these days it is more about time than anything else. I usually only have one or two hours per day to play, okay maybe slightly longer during the weekends. I do tend to try to finish the game I start to play, but it is also not uncommon for me to lose interest in the middle of the games. Sacred Gold for example, is the first game ever I get from GOG, and until today I have not even finished it yet, maybe only about 30%.

Sometimes the hardest part is beginning. If a game does not hold my interest in the first hour or so, I normally put it aside for another day (which may never come for it).

Hence why I try to avoid long games, try to find shortest games to play instead, and hope that at least I finish 1 game per month, and I do not always succeed in that.

i have found it to be very satisfying to finish a game. which is why i try to do it, but the truth is i buy another one within a short while, and thus, i rarely get more then about 6 hours into a game before moving on to something else.

Hehe, I have trouble with this all the time as well. I do beat a ton of my games though. Since I can't seem to stop buying games, I use the fact that I beat one as justification to buy a new one as a way to very weakly control how much I spend on games, lol.

What happens to me is if I don't beat it, it usually stays in the back of my head that I have to beat it, lessening the fun I'm having with a new game. Plus, I just like knowing that I beat/completed something and experienced everything I could in it. I'm the same way with books, and I think that's actually where I got this "need" to finish games from. Unless the book is so horrible that I don't go further than 25 pages, I always finish a book.

Doesn't mean I beat everything though. I just try to take games to as far a completion as possible based on whether I can stand playing it anymore. For instance, Dragon Age. Loved it for about the first 25 hrs. Then it was like the graphics took an even further dump, and I slogged through the next 20 hrs. Once I got to the dwarf city, I liked it again, but once I got out, I didn't feel like playing anymore. I got to about 80% completion and I kept it installed, kept telling myself I was going to play it. A year later, I finally uninstalled it knowing that I was never going to finish it, and didn't buy the 2nd one since I knew I wouldn't play it.

To answer your direct question, I think what keeps me going in the game is to figure out everything there is about it. So yeah, like you, when I've seen everything the game has to offer, I sort of shut down. Best example is the first Assassin's Creed. I though it was the best thing ever, then the quests were the same in just a different part of the same three towns. I shut it off and never played again. Games like Torchlight though, yeah, within the first couple hours you've basically seen everything . . .except the awesome new loot you can get. That's what keeps me playing ActionRPG games all the way to completion.

Unfortunately there are very few games that keep me interested based on story alone. I don't think the game industry is all the way there yet with storytelling. Either they're massive too long and convoluted where the kitchen sink of cliches is tossed at you (jRPG's), or they're quick 5-10hr FPS romps about survival or killing the bad guy--plus everything in between like the massive story choose your own adventure games.

I think you've got to look at why you like gaming to begin with. If you like them the way you like seeing art in a museum, then yeah, you'll look, stare into it and read the little text, but not invest anymore time into it.

For me, I traveled a lot growing up. My wife got sick, money ran dry paying for medical bills, and so I haven't really been able to travel anymore outside of CA. So when I game, it's to recreate that sense of adventure of traveling to someplace new. When I travel, I like to adventure and get lost in a town and find little food dives, or little hidden places you wouldn't find on a travel book (like this mayan run underground cave system in the Yucatan where some little 8yr old kid gave us a snorkling tour, lol). So because of that, I like trying to see everything on a game map, all the locations, clear out all the black if a game has the fog of war. It's sort of OCD, yes I know.

There's nothing wrong with your way of playing though. If all you want is to stay for drinks in a game, whereas I like appetizers, main course, dessert and coffee, doesn't really matter. Like some of the other posters have said, all that matters is that you enjoyed yourself.

I suck at shooters. And was afraid of Doom when I was younger, so never finished that, either. We got that Duke Nukem for free, suck at it as well (not that I particularly tried, mind :D).

First game to ever complete was Mass Effect, then I cheated my way to the ending of PoP: Sands of Time (seems I don't suck only at shooters -.-"). Haven't gotten to complete the rest of the series (mainly because of time/difficulty issues. And those shitty twins in PoP:TT. Couldn't defeat them on normal difficulty T_T").

So I only completed 4 games to this point, the ME Series and PoP: SoT. But I can't really say I've been a "gamer" for a long time, so I tend to play only games with a rich lore and which can suck me in their worlds =)

Ah wait, I finished DA:O and its DLC as well :) Aaaand I should mention I have multiple playthroughs of the ME games :D (that means: loooots of hours invested in those games xD)

I do alright finishing RPGs and shooters, particularly the Infinity Engine games. That said, the number of games I've not beat pales in comparison. While the sentiment certainly holds true that games should be entertainment and there's no reason to play beyond that point, I have found satisfaction in making myself finish the games even when I wasn't so keen on it in spots. It's a rare occurrence though as I have next to no willpower.